Over the weekend, Collin County Sheriff Terry Box made the dramatic announcement that neither he nor his deputies will enforce “unconstitutional” federal gun laws.

Inspired by this uncompromising declaration, I hereby make a vow:

If, tomorrow, my editor instructs me to write a column stating as fact that the Old Red Courthouse is made entirely of provolone cheese and that John Wiley Price is heir to the throne of Denmark, I’ll lodge a vigorous protest. I’ve got principles too, by gawd.

Like dozens of other U.S. sheriffs who have already climbed aboard this popular showboat, Box seems to be laboring under a misapprehension.

He evidently thinks that one day soon a secret Bat phone in his office will buzz, and some tyrannical bureaucrat in Washington will instruct the God-fearing lawmen of Collin County to fan out in the subdivisions and shopping malls and start … confiscating guns.

He apparently believes that other, more weak-kneed, less-principled sheriffs will be bullied into rifling through the glove compartments and sock drawers of innocent, law-abiding citizens looking for weapons to seize.

Not him, though. No siree Bob! Washington politicians will never, ever, never, never, never make Terry G. Box violate the sacred Constitution of the U.S. of A.!

That’s surely good news, but I don’t really see that anybody is asking him to do so.

What this gridlocked traffic jam of a screeching debate is really about depends on whom you ask. Most of the president’s 23 specific gun policy proposals (they were not, contrary to popular opinion, “executive orders”) are benign recommendations about emergency preparedness and standardization of databases.

The ones that have all the sheriffs in full freak-out mode are apparently the proposed bans on military-style “assault weapons” (please, DO NOT write me letters arguing the contested definitions of these things — I’m sticking with the default position that we’re talking about a firearm that sends forth a projectile with each successive pull of the trigger) and on extended magazines that can hold a whole lotta ammo.

I agree, in theory, with those who ask why any normal person needs a blinged-out faux combat weapon with a high-capacity magazine.

But I also agree it’s not the government’s job to decide what you do or don’t need. Its job is to make regulations that balance guaranteed liberties with public safety.

Besides, there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of evidence that the earlier “assault weapons ban,” which expired in 2004, had a profound impact on gun violence.

By far the deadliest weapon of choice in the dreary everyday round of murders and suicides and little kids accidentally shooting their playmates is the common-as-dirt cheap handgun.

But Sheriff Terry Box, dedicated public servant that he may be, is not employed to interpret the Constitution or to decide which laws meet his personal standards.

His job is to enforce the laws of the state of Texas — and that’s a whole ’nother round of red-faced, headache-inducing screaming over whether opportunistic state legislators can rush forward and make it illegal in advance to enforce federal laws they don’t like.

Honestly, people are so paranoid and out-of-control on this issue that we have developed an alarming inability to talk sense about it.

Personally, I have less faith in the president’s proposed “ban” than I do in serious, objective (!) science-based research into the reasons behind gun violence and the policies that might reduce it.

Sadly, the don’t-budge-an-inch absolutists are painfully fact-resistant. When, in an earlier column, I cited the common figure of 30,000 gun deaths in this country per year, an angry caller left me an enraged message:

“Check with the FBI! They’ll tell you there are 6,500 gun deaths a year! Yet you print 30,000 — how can you make such a humongous mistake?” He was nearly tearful with rage.

This man clearly thought that I had purposely lied, that I’m a deceitful mainstream-media anti-gun liberal harpy — which, again, is a matter of opinion.

What I suppose he was referring to was the FBI’s statistic on gun murders, which was about 8,500 in 2011, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “Gun violence,” of course, covers suicides and accidents as well.

But the point is that we can’t even speak the same language on this issue; we can’t agree on even the most basic propositions or statistics.

Frankly, I do not want gun policy to be based on emotion, superstition, fear, wrongheaded assumptions or whether the local sheriff thinks the Second Amendment is the holiest document in all Christendom.

And for the record, I don’t have much faith in the president’s hurried-up package of knee-jerk recommendations, either.

We need research and analysis provided by people who know what they’re talking about — and, so far, this hot-headed debate has seen precious little of it.

I’d swap the stuff Box fears is “unconstitutional” — in a heartbeat — for a pledge from the NRA to quit trying to bully the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other reputable health organizations out of conducting studies into gun violence.

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